


all the big dreams that we won't pursue

by ohmygodwhy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Drug Addiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, the ben & klaus show: how to make homelessness look fun and exciting!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-23 18:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18555127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: “If I can’t get a passport, there’s still plenty to see here. All fifty states, huh? People do that and collect quarters or whatever, but we could just grab a rock from each state. Or like, a postcard. We could mail them to dad,” he laughs at his sudden inspiration.Ben isn’t nearly as blown away by Klaus’ incredible sense of humor, but he doesn’t say no.(Klaus, Ben, and the never-ending, car-less road trip to nowhere.)





	all the big dreams that we won't pursue

**Author's Note:**

> i have. so many things to work on but this was the only draft tht cooperated w me long enough for me to finish it?
> 
> the first time i watched tua and saw klaus talking to ben i, out loud, said 'he sees dead ppl and he sees his dead brother. he's talking to his dead brother tht is so sad.' it took me until the motel scene before it really sunk in and i was like Bitch That's Sad!

 

They’re fourteen and young enough to still have some stars left in their eyes, or whatever the phrase is. Stars bright in their bright little eyes, reflected down from the stars up in the sky, while they sprawl out across the roof they’re not supposed to be on.  
  
“I read about that,” Ben says, voice quiet but firm the way it is when he’s sure about something.  
  
“Read about what?” Klaus asks, head turning to look at him. The tile of the roofing is cool against his temple, his body still warm and fired up from training earlier.  
  
“Venus. Or Mercury — I can’t really tell which one it is.”  
  
“Where?” Klaus asks, squinting up at the night sky.  
  
Ben shifts a little bit closer and points, arm stretching up and out, “Right there, see?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It’s a little bit bigger than everything else. It doesn’t shine as bright, but it’s still there.”  
  
Klaus doesn’t see it, can’t manage to lock onto one section of the endless sky long enough to like, focus, but he lets out a long _ohhh_ and nods his head anyways, just to make Ben happy. Ben’s real smart — maybe even as smart as Five, if he were still around, just in a different way — and he reads all kinds of books about all kinds of shit. Klaus likes it when Ben tells him about the shit that he reads; likes the way his eyes get this little shine and likes the way it feels like he’s being trusted with something, even if it’s just the ecosystem of a rainforest or the latest page of some poem book he’s into. Makes him feel special, and seen; hardly anything makes him feel like that anymore.  
  
“There are a bunch of constellations, too, but I can’t tell where they are yet.”  
  
“Like those spoons, right?”  
  
“The dippers?” Ben asks, turning to look at him with that mix of fond incredulousness he inspires in people.  
  
“Yeah, those,” Klaus says, snapping his fingers, “There’s a big one and a little one, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ben says, and Klaus thinks he sounds much better here, talking about things he actually give a shit about, than he does in front of a camera answering questions about the freaky tentacle monsters under his shirt. “One of them is supposed to point north, I think.”  
  
“Like a compass,” Klaus adds helpfully.  
  
“Like a huge, cosmic compass,” Ben agrees.  
  
“Does the spoon part point north or is it the stick end of it?”  
  
“It isn’t like a _spoon_ spoon,” Ben says, and he could almost sound like Five used to when he over-explained everything, if only Five didn’t have such a big ego and wasn’t like, MIA, “It’s more like a ladle, for soup and stuff.”  
  
“So does the soup end of it point north?” Klaus remedies.  
  
Ben huffs a quiet laugh; most things about Ben are quiet, other than his monsters. “I dunno. I think it’s supposed to point to the North Star, not actually point north itself.”  
  
“Huh,” Klaus hums, considering. He searches the night sky for a giant soup ladle, but he can’t string stars together long enough to finish the picture. He wonders how out of their minds ancient people had to be to look up at a bunch of dots and see a big spoon, “I guess it’s still like a compass, then.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ben agrees vaguely. “I think you’re better off using an actual compass, though.”  
  
“Or a GPS.”  
  
“Or maybe just don’t get lost.”  
  
“That’s just boring,” Klaus says. He rolls over onto his stomach and props his chin up on his hand, feeling strangely like he can still feel the stars’ gazes on his back.  
  
“It’s safer, though,” Ben argues softly, subdued, the way Ben always argues.  
  
“Yeah, well, if it’s either stay here and be safe or leave and get lost for a while, I’d rather leave.” It’s one of their big ideas, lately, as shit gets worse and worse: the idea of leaving someday.  
  
Ben looks at him for a moment, and drops his gaze to the ground. “You really think we’re ever gonna leave?”  
  
Klaus feels this sudden, deep surge of _something_ — he wants to take Ben and run away and never come back, but he can’t right now because they’re fourteen years old and don’t know shit yet. “Yeah,” he says instead of enacting his spur of the moment plan, “For sure. We’re gonna get outta here and go like, find the North Star or something.”  
  
“We can’t go to a star, Klaus.”  
  
“Well then we’ll just go north. Or south. Or anywhere else but here.”  
  
“The world _is_ huge,” Ben admits.  
  
“So we’re gonna go see all of it, yeah?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ben agrees. He doesn’t sound all that confident about it, but Klaus takes it anyways. Dumbass fourteen year old that he is, he rolls onto his back again and stares up at the stars and actually thinks, for a moment, that maybe they will grow up, and leave, and travel the world and live out their lives away from this shitty, shitty mansion.  
  
(They don’t.)

 

Ben dies and then he’s back and then Klaus leaves because he’s old enough to leave and can’t stand being in that house anymore — Diego long gone and Vanya fucking off to college.

Before that, though, there’s the funeral. It’s a very private, quiet affair, Old Reginald tying up the loose ends and giving as little media coverage as possible, like the Academy’s shitty reputation was more important than the son he had just killed.

They’re all dealing with different ways, and only Allison, Luther and maybe Vanya can stand up and say nice words. He and Diego sit in their chairs, and don’t offer shit. Dad asks if anyone else would like to speak, and Diego says “fuck you” and storms off. Klaus, after he’s gone, says “I knew one of us would be killed eventually; I never thought it’d be Ben.”

“I did,” Ben says next to him, taking Diego’s now empty seat. “No one can hold a giant tentacle monster back for eighteen years.”

Klaus hadn’t been able to stop himself from snorting at that. Everyone had looked positively fucking scandalized, so Klaus had covered it up with a quick, “I mean, he was the best of us, y’know? Better than I’ll ever be, and way better than Reginald.”

“Klaus—“ Luther had started, warning in his voice, but Klaus cut him off.

The statue had gone up hours before the funeral, and Ben has stared at it, vaguely horrified, and said “I hate it.”

So, “Ben would hate the statue, by the way,” he tells them.

“Number Four!” Dad had hissed, and Klaus had stood up and walked away — all dramatic, all _absolutely insolent,_ he hears his father say.

“Why didn’t you tell them I was there?” Ben asked him, following him into the house.

“Do you want me to?”

Ben is quiet for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he says, voice stilted, something vaguely bitter and deeply sad.

“They probably wouldn’t believe me anyways,” Klaus adds.

Ben doesn’t smile, but his lips twitch. “You high?”

“You know it, baby.” Klaus grins.

“And you can still see me?”

“Guess so.”

Ben doesn’t ask why. Klaus doesn’t tell him why, because he doesn’t really know and he doesn't really care. He wonders if he’ll see Ben for the rest of his life; if he’ll be there even when he’s doing all the shit Klaus knows he doesn’t want him to do. He wonders how he feels about it.

He lasts about three more weeks at the house, and then he packs up his shit and he leaves. He doesn’t really have any plans or anywhere to like, go, but he figures that maybe he’ll hit up his dealer and see if he knows any motels where he won’t be murdered or jumped, or maybe he’ll just spend all his money on weed or pills instead. He’ll decide when he gets to it.

In the meantime: “Where d’you wanna go, mi hermano? The world is big and bitchin’. I said we’d leave, right? I kinda planned for you to be alive, though.”

“I didn’t,” Ben says, and he sounds all certain and solid the way used to when he was explaining the stars or the Egyptian version of the sun god. “I didn’t think I’d ever leave.”

“Well,” Klaus says, because their father taught them how to gouge someone’s eye out but he never taught them how to give basic human comfort. (But how do you comfort someone who is dead? How do you tell them that they will be okay, when they will never have the chance the heal again? Klaus sure as hell never learned how to do that.) “At least we are now. I think that’s the best we can do.”

It’s the only thing they can do. Luther had his strength and Diego had his fire and Ben had his monsters, but he’s dead now. Klaus has never had much power, locked in the mausoleum and in that mansion and in his own stupid head. He can’t destroy all of that, fight it all off or whatever, but he can walk away. He can leave, and he can live, and he can just not give a shit about anything else.

“I’m kinda hungry,” he says. “You in the mood for a Egg McMuffin?”

 

Ben says he wants to see Paris, because they went a bunch of places but they never went to Paris, and Klaus asks how much money a passport is and Ben says you might need to have a place of residence to get one and Klaus doesn’t know if that’s true but it sounds like it might be.

So he says, “If I can’t get a passport, there’s still plenty to see here. All fifty states, huh? People do that and collect quarters or whatever, but we could just grab a rock from each state. Or like, a postcard. We could mail them to dad,” he laughs at his sudden inspiration.

Ben isn’t nearly as blown away by Klaus’ incredible sense of humor, but he doesn’t say no. “Dunno how we’ll get to Hawaii,” he says, “Or Alaska.”

“We’ll figure it out when we get to it,” Klaus shrugs.

It’s not really a mission of his, to get to all fifty states, it’s mainly just something he keeps in mind as they go.

He goes through stages where he’s more into it — like, if he saves up however much money, they can probably hit Oregon, Washington and like, Wyoming in the next month, and then they get to Oregon and he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel that holds all his resolve and desire to be sober in any capacity and he’s so fucking dope-sick he can barely appreciate the nice breeze, so he blows the rest of his blowjob money on Oregon Weed, because they love that shit up there, and then some certified Oregon Heroin, because the weed wasn’t nearly strong enough to get rid of the guy who drowned on a private beach that caught him at the state border. He doesn’t even _like_ heroin that much, but he sticks the questionably clean needle right into his veins anyways and ignores the look on Ben’s face as he does it.

“Sorry, Ben Ten,” He says, “We’ll have to get to Washington later.”

They don’t get to Washington later, but Ben does manage to bully him into rehab again when they wander back to familiar turf. He says “I still wanna see the Grand Canyon, and unfortunately I can’t get there by myself,” which kind of make Klaus feel bad, so he checks himself back in and tells everyone he’s been busy traveling the world and that’s why he hasn’t been around lately.

Nobody believes him, but nobody pushes it, because nobody ever actually wants to know what everyone else is getting up to. It’s much easier to imagine that the guy who left through the window last night just decided he wanted Taco Bell and got lost on his way back, and not think about the backpack everyone knows he keeps two alleys down.

“Why the Grand Canyon?” He asks Ben a few nights later, staring up at the ceiling and holding onto the sheets for dear fucking life.

Ben shrugs, “I’ve heard it’s really pretty.”

“If you jumped into it, would you just, like, reappear next to me? Or would you have to climb back up?”

Ben actually seems to consider to for a moment; Klaus has found that Ben’s always more willing to humor him when he’s in rehab.

“Don’t know. But I’m not gonna try it.”

“Why not? It’s not like you’ll feel it.”

“You really want to watch me jump over the Grand Canyon?”

Klaus has to close his eyes to block out the image of Ben dying a second time. “I guess not,” he admits grudgingly. “How far away is it?”

Ben shrugs again, “It’s in Arizona, so…”

“That doesn’t answer my question, sir,” Klaus presses the palms of his hands against his closed eyes.

“Look it up,” Ben shoots back, but his voice is too soft to bite. If Klaus lies still enough, he can imagine that he’s thirteen and back in Ben’s room, bothering him while he’s trying to read.

“Yeah, okay,” he concedes, and he suddenly feels like he’s going to start fucking crying for some bizarre, withdrawal-induced reason.

He looks up how to get to the Grand Canyon the next day, and Ben is all excited about it — Klaus figures if you’ve seen a canyon once, you’ve seen it a trillion times, and he doesn’t even wanna think about how many people actually might have fallen over it over the course of the last so and so years, but he hasn’t seen Ben excited about doing something in a while. There’s not much he can do, being deceased and all, but he can look at things. Klaus supposes this could be an alright thing to look at.

So they have a vague plan for the future, and then Klaus is discharged and tries to get a job because he has no money but he also has no prior job experience so he _doesn’t_ get the job, and one of his rehab friends tells him there’s gonna be this Sick Ass Block Party later, and he doesn’t have a job to get up for in the morning so he goes to the party instead of listening to Ben, who tells him not to go to the party.

“Klaus,” he says, “Come on, you just got out.” 

“It’s just a party,” Klaus says, even though he knows the bone deep itch he’s felt since he checked in is going to win over everything else, soon.

“Klaus,” he says, and his voice gets all sharp when he’s irritated, “Just call someone, for the night. Call Diego.”

“I don’t wanna call Diego.”

“Then - “

“I’m not calling Allison, either. Or Vanya, or fucking Luther.”

“They can help.”

Klaus scoffs, and it comes out harsher than he meant it to, but he feels like he’s about to crawl out of his skin and none of his equally fucked up siblings are gonna make it any better, “I haven’t seen any of them in years, ‘cause we all left. We all moved on. And no matter how much you want to see them, they’re not gonna see you.”

Ben takes a step back, and if Klaus were a little bit higher right now, if everything was a little less loud and invasive, maybe he would be able to shut the hell up and take another hit. But he can’t, because he hasn’t even taken one hit because Ben wanted him to go to rehab and now he’s far too sober and there are far too many people who have died.

“I know that,” Ben says, and his voice is brittle, “I know they won’t see me. You never tell them I’m there.”

“Because you didn’t want me to!” Klaus throws his shaking hands up, “Because they wouldn’t believe me anyways. If I go knocking on Diego’s door, saying ‘hey, Ben wants to say hi’, you think he’ll even let me in?”

“I don’t care about that,” Ben says, voice trembling, because he does care and Klaus knows he cares. No matter how good of a brother he is, how fucking selfless his intentions, he knows that Ben wishes Klaus wasn’t the only one he could speak to. God knows Klaus would hate being stuck with himself.

So, “Yes you do,” Klaus says.

“Well fucking sue me,” Ben’s voice finally cracks. “My bad for wanting to talk to my siblings.”

“I asked if you wanted me to tell them,” Klaus says, “And you said no. And that was six years ago, so now everyone’s moved on. Me showing up and reminding everyone that - “ he breaks off, frustrated and not sure what he’s even trying to say anymore, “Everyone has - has had their chance to grieve, and get over it, and move on but I can’t, because you’ve always _been_ here.”

There’s a moment where Klaus’ voice cuts off into silence, and Ben looks like he just got slapped. Klaus’ heart drops.

“Ben,” he says, “I - I’m not mad that you’re here, you know that, I - I’m just _saying_. That me, y’know, it’s not a good idea to call Diego. Or anyone. It won’t go well. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, and Klaus wishes he would open his mouth and complain about something. He just looks so profoundly fucking _disappointed_ , and sad, and it makes Klaus feel like shit, but not a shit big enough to outweigh the empty, hungry force of withdrawal, so he goes to the party anyways and gets drunk so he doesn’t have to look at Ben’s guilt-inducing face, and then he gets high, because everyone knows he was gonna do it eventually.

He thinks about the Grand Canyon, and wonders how long it would take them to get there if he got up and left right now. He wonders how people think fairness exists in the world at all when Klaus is here, wasting the night away and living, and his brother is stuck here with him, Not Living, when he could be in Arizona looking at rocks. He thinks he should stop, because he only thinks deeply about these things when he’s had too much, but then he also thinks that if he gets past this point then maybe he’ll just be able stop thinking altogether.

He knows he’s reached his limit, and he knows he should stop. He takes another hit anyways, and wakes up in the back of an ambulance.

He blinks up to Ben hovering above him, looking like he’s about to shake himself apart, looking so goddamn scared it shocks Klaus into the past — Ben, after the fact, after a mission, covered in other people’s blood and standing in the middle of Klaus’ room with his arms wrapped around himself, Klaus trying to wipe all the drying shit off his brother’s face and Ben looking like he’s about to goddamn cry.

“It’s okay,” he says, tilting Ben’s head to the side to get some of the blood on his neck — he says, gasping into the not-quite-empty air of the ambulance, “It’s okay, Ben, I can’t even see them.”

Ben looks like someone just hit him, drawing back as the paramedic — he knows this one, he thinks blearily, it’s John!  — leans over him, little baby flashlight in hand.

“Klaus,” he says, sighing in what might sound like relief if Klaus didn’t know better, “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Klaus chokes out, stubborn heart beating in his chest, “I can hear your squeaky voice loud and clear, man.”

John huffs a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head and falling back against the other side of the van. “Jesus,” He says, “That was a close call, Hargreeves. I thought we lost you for a sec.”

“Nah,” he smiles wanly, tired, “Can’t get rid of me that easy.”

He, suddenly and fiercely, staring up at the white ambulance ceiling, wishes that were true.

 

 

“Shit,” Klaus says, scrubbing at his face with the white YMCA towel, “If Five were still around, he could take us to Hawaii.”

Ben, sitting, legs crossed on a bench with a magazine and resolutely not looking at him, says, “If Five were still around, he wouldn’t take us anywhere.”

“Oh, right,” Klaus sighs, wrapping the towel around his waist, “He always was an arrogant little shit, huh; I guess nostalgia is tinting my glasses.”

“What?”

“Like, rose-colored glasses. That’s a phrase people say.”

Ben opens his mouth like he wants to disagree, but just shakes his head and closes it again. It’s how Klaus wins a lot of conversations.

He takes Ben’s blissful moments of silence to dry off, run some fingers through his hair, take his time getting dressed. Honestly, he thinks, bless Janet From Waffle House’s whole heart and soul for giving him the 41-fucking-1 on this place. He doesn’t know what he would do without being able to actually regularly shower - well, he _did_ , for a while, and it wasn’t pretty! He still likes baths better, but he’ll take what he can get. Thank you kind, Christian services. Affordable, friendly, and pretty much all over the world.

“Plus, wasn’t the song about this place made by a gay dude?” he asks Ben, continuing his positive train of thought out loud.

Lucky for him, Ben has spent enough time around him to just go with it, “The ‘it’s fun to stay at the YMCA’ one?” he clarifies.

“Yeah,” Klaus spends a moment blinking at himself in the mirror; his eyes don’t look as blatantly crackhead as they did when he came in, so he shouldn’t scare anyone on his way out.

“Could be,” Ben says, “I was never super into eighties.”

“I think that was seventies.”

“Well then, I wasn’t super into seventies.”

“Huh. Maybe I should ask Luther.”

Ben looks at him like he just said the dumbest possible thing he could have, “You’re gonna call Luther up for the first time in years to ask if the guy who sings YMCA was gay?”

Klaus laughs, pulling on his incredibly stylish jacket and throwing the towel into the basket thing, “God, can you imagine?”

“You’d give him a heart attack.”

“How, by calling him or by saying the word gay?”

He sees Ben’s signature ‘what you just said was funny but I’m feeling too Cool or Responsible to laugh at it’ lip twitch. “You’d freak the shit out of him. He’d think it was an emergency.”

“He thinks everything’s an emergency. He’d probably have a crisis about the song.”

“Don’t be mean,” Ben says, but he’s smiling anyways. Task number one of the day, as of right now: accomplished. Task two is probably, Klaus doesn’t know, eat?

“Yeah, yeah, wouldn’t wanna worry the big guy anyway. Let’s get some breakfast, instead.”

Ben sets the magazine down and follows Klaus out of the showers and out of the building. It’s a pretty nice day, Klaus notices. A little chilly, but it’s also pretty early in the morning, so there’s potential there for it to warm up.

“Okay,” he says, eyes searching, “We have Waffle House, McDonald’s, Taco Bell - ”

“We’re not going to Taco Bell at six in the morning,” Ben says.

“I have _some_ taste,” Klaus says, offended, “I’m just listing options here.”

“Well, list better ones.”

Klaus shakes his head in disbelief, “The disrespect,” he laments to a business-looking guy as he passes by. The man blinks at him for a moment, like he was shocked out a dream or slapped in the face and is very upset about it, and then keeps on walking.

“The disrespect,” he says to Ben, gesturing at the business man’s back, and then they pass a Denny’s, so Klaus makes an executive decision and chooses the Denny’s.

It’s pretty empty this early in the morning, so Klaus and Ben get a whole booth to themselves. The waitress who comes to take his order looks very tired but also like she’s trying very hard to not look tired, so he keeps it quick.

“I’ll have the three w—oh, wait you guys have crepes here? I’ll have crepes, then. The strawberry ones.”

“Anything else?”

“You want anything?” He asks Ben. The waitress turns to look at what is, essentially, empty air to her.

“Maybe an omelette,” Ben says, leaning back in his seat.

“He’ll have an omelette,” Klaus tells the poor waitress, who’s looking increasingly more uncomfortable by the second.

“Any bacon or sausage?”

Ben says “bacon,” so Klaus tells her “bacon,” and she says their food will be ready shortly and that if he needs anything else she’s here to help, et cetera et cetera. When she brings them their food, she holds the omelette plate like she doesn’t know what to do with it. Klaus gestures helpfully at the other side of the booth, and she sets the plate down carefully in front of Ben.

“Thank you,” he says, sounding vaguely surprised, so Klaus says thank you enough for the both of them, just so she really gets it. She sets down the cup of coffee Ben asked for last minute on Ben’s side of the table, too, and she’s really nice about it.

“You’re gonna tip her,” Ben tells him.

“Um, I always tip?”

“You’re gonna tip her _well_ ,” he adds. Klaus has much more he could say to that, including how he always tips well, and how Ben can’t say shit about bad tipping because he never tips, _period_ , but he’s hungry, and the crepes look super good.

He finishes them off in record time, but doesn’t touch Ben’s omelette. Ben can’t eat it, obviously, but Klaus knows that he likes the idea of being able to. It makes him feel more included in the world when he’s allowed to pretend, and Klaus isn’t gonna take that away from him, even if it gets him way more weird looks than one gay should have to deal with in a day.

He takes a long sip of his raspberry iced tea, which is and always will be better than boring old coffee, and he pulls out whatever money he has in his pockets and pays, leaving a generous ten dollar tip for the nice waitress.

When they’re outside, he fishes out a cigarette and says, “Where d’you wanna go, mon frère favorite?” it’s his favorite way to start the day when his head is clear: giving Ben an option, “The world is our oyster — it’s gotta have a pearl out there somewhere.”  
  
“I dunno,” Ben shrugs, “I kinda wanna see the ocean.”  
  
“Hm. I think it’s too far away to get there on foot. By the way, what state are we in?”  
  
Ben looks decidedly unimpressed, but also like he’s not really surprised. “I think I saw a sign or two about Chicago.”  
  
“What’s that, Florida?”  
  
“Um, Illinois? Florida’s way down south, man.”  
  
“Oh,” Klaus pauses for a moment to save this important info for later. “I thought Illinois was just a myth.”  
  
“You said that about Ohio, too. And Delaware. And Montana.”  
  
“Well! I never hear any news about whatever the hell is happening in _Delaware_ , so my bad for being skeptical. There’s plenty of things the government makes up.”  
  
“What, like Area 51?”  
  
Ben went through this big conspiracy theory phase when they were like fifteen; he got his hands on all sorts of books about it, and Klaus used to sit on the edge of Ben’s bed, near the window to feel the sun against his back, and listen to ben talk about all the crazy shit he’d read. It was a fun way to pass the time, in between all the missions and training and like, trauma.  
  
“Yeah, the aliens and shit.”  
  
“Yeah, but this is a whole state, though. How could they make up a whole state? You can see it on maps, Klaus.”  
  
“I dunno,” Klaus says, hiding a smile behind his hand because this is the first significantly long and coherent day he’s had with Ben in a while, and it’s not even seven in the morning yet, “I’m sure it’s possible.”  
  
Ben sighs and looks to the heavens like he’s the most put upon person on the planet, “Whatever,” he says, but he looks like he’s fighting a smile. “We’re in Illinois right now, so obviously it exists.”  
  
“Are we really, though?” Klaus pushes, just for the fuck of it, “What if this is just a really bad trip?”  
  
“Would your subconscious ever be able to give me this much common sense?”  
  
Klaus gasps in mock offense, pressing his hand to his chest, “Are you saying I don’t have common sense?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ben says, point blank and merciless.  
  
“Damn,” Klaus whistles, “Murdered by my own dead brother. The cops’ll never be able to solve this one.”

“To be fair, when do cops solve shit?”  
  
“Are you trash talking cops just ‘cause Diego got kicked out of cop school?”  
  
Ben crosses his arms and says “no”, which means “yes, Klaus, of course, you’re so intuitive and smart.”  
  
Instead of pushing further, Klaus snorts and says, “We can cross Illinois off the list, then,” slashing through the word in the air.  
  
“Where’s the list?” Ben asks pointedly.  
  
“Oh,” Klaus blinks, “I thought you were keeping track.”  
  
“Oh, well,” Ben mimes checking his pockets, “I don’t really have anything to write with, do I.”  
  
Klaus waves his hand back and forth, “I thought you’d just like, remember it. You’re good at remembering stuff.”  
  
“I have more important things to remember than what states you threw up in.”  
  
“Like what?” Klaus asks incredulously, crossing his arms, “You’re dead!” And then, when Ben just crosses his arm and frowns at him, Klaus sighs, “Sorry, sorry, you’re still sore about it, I get it. I guess we’ll just have to start from the top.”  
  
“Jesus,” Ben says under his breath, “Okay, I mostly remember the list.”  
  
Klaus’ strung out heart gets all warm, “What d’you mean mostly?”  
  
“I don’t know if we went to North or South Carolina.”  
  
Klaus pauses, “We’ve been to a Carolina?”  
  
Ben suddenly looks very concerned, “I mean... I think we have.”  
  
They both look at each other for a moment.  
  
“Well,” Klaus says, after they both take the time to contemplate whether or not bad memory is contagious or not, “it’s not the ocean, but I guess we can go see Lake Michigan.”  
  
Ben, seemingly shocked into a state of no complaining, just shrugs. “Shit, we might as well.”  
  
So Klaus leans against the wall to finish his cigarette, puts it out against the brick, and goes to find someone he can ask for general directions to the lake. He knows without looking that Ben is still behind him.

He can see the sun just barely start to rise over the buildings, so they have all day to get there.

 

**Author's Note:**

> im So Close to graduating comment to keep me from dropping out & come [talk to me](http://gaynasas.tumblr.com/) abt these messes


End file.
